This is the week of The Hateful Eight, the latest Quentin Tarantino film, but Tarantino being Tarantino, there were no screenings for reviewers, so I’ve yet to see it. There also seems to have been some falling out with the Cineworld, Picturehouse and Curzon chains such that their cinemas won’t be showing the film at all. Tarantino, such a pain, and if we were to meet, which I admit is unlikely —we move in very different circles — I would have no hesitation in telling him so. What’s he going to do? Slice off one of my ears, nail me to the wall with the other, stroll off to lunch, then come back and pump my chest full of bullets? On the other hand, I could just keep quiet, I suppose.
So, instead of The Hateful Eight, I offer you Room, which isn’t out until next week, but there’s nothing much else around, so you’re just going to have to live with it. Room is based on the 2010 novel by Emma Donoghue, which was a literary sensation and, unlike Gone Girl, say, was seriously terrific. In a perfect world you would come to Room in a state of complete innocence — why are Ma and Jack in this room? — but the world isn’t perfect, so I’ll tell you: this mother and her young son have been imprisoned by an abductor and the boy, who is now five, and was born in ‘room’, knows nothing else. I have read the book, which is a pity, as I can’t now unread it, and in some ways this doesn’t quite match up. But, that said, it is probably good enough, and given the complex and difficult material, as good as you might hope for.
With a screenplay by Donoghue and directed by Lenny Abrahamson (Adam &Paul, Frank), it opens with Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) in ‘room’, which is effectively a reinforced shed, on his fifth birthday.
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